More and more people are earning college degrees. As of 2011, close to one out of every three people over 25 held a bachelor’s degree, according to a U.S. Census Bureau release. “As recently as 1998, fewer than one-quarter of people this age had this level of education.”

Because more of us are college-educated, this makes it so that “just any” degree will not necessarily suffice for some people anymore.

Ocean acidification can now be seen from space, highlighting an ongoing danger of climate change and revealing the regions most at risk.

Seawater absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, that humans release into the atmosphere each year, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Image: A global look at ocean pH reveals that the water is more alkaline (basic) in the open ocean than in many coastal regions. The more alkaline the water is, the better poised it is to resist ocean acidification. Credit: Ifremer/ESA/CNES

The odds for new businesses aren't great. Entrepreneurs face massive challenges launching, let alone sustaining, their ventures. According to the Small Business Association, only about half of the companies started survive by the five year mark.

For the majority of these businesses, the entrepreneurs aren't cashing out with a major payday. They're failing -- often because the entrepreneurs who start them don't have the skills to build them into sustainable businesses. A brilliant software engineer may have developed the next WhatsApp, but if he doesn't understand how to structure and run a business, his chance of long-term success is slim.

Feb. 17, 2015 - 4:59 - ‘The Creator’s Code’ author Amy Wilkinson discusses her six steps to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

While the web has gone through a lot of changes since it first came into existence in the early 1990s, the fundamental tech behind it hasn’t changed since 1999. That’s until now with the introduction of a fresh new upgrade to HTTP 2.0 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), spelling faster page loads, more mobile-friendly and more encryption. HTTP is a big deal. It’s the application that makes the web what it is — enabling the transferring of packets of data between the user (your browser) and the server host (the website).

In a February 2014 interview with Dr. Paul Jacobs, the then CEO of the wireless technology company Qualcomm and now its executive chairman, it dawned on me that there were common threads among the world’s leading innovators that no one had yet defined.

First, it may sound trivial, but I found that most of these guys loved Lego as children and perhaps still do. Larry Page is an adult fan of Lego (or AFOL as the community sometimes refers to itself), and built the housing for the first Google server prototype out of Lego.

Think of the device you're reading this on. It's the culmination of hundreds, maybe thousands, of inventions that all got added together to form a computer, tablet or smartphone. Most of this technology came out of Silicon Valley, one of the world's greatest hubs for innovation. But what is it about that place that makes it such a fruitful breeding ground for ideas?

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

When Rand Paul went on CNN last month and warned anyone looking to fly a drone over his house that they should “beware” because “I’ve got a shotgun,” you could imagine lots of heads nodding in agreement.

For instance, you might imagine security managers at Apple’s new Silicon Valley “spaceship” headquarters would like to shoot down overhead drones snooping on the construction project. And guards in the Secret Service security shack at the White House might welcome that capability too, after an off-duty intelligence officer crashed his DJI Phantom there last month.

Image: DJI's Phantom 2 Vision+ Image Credit: DJI 

Obsessed with mobile growth? Join us February 23-24 when we reveal the best technologies and strategies to help your company grow on mobile. It all takes place at our 5th annual Mobile Summit at the scenic Cavallo Point Resort in Sausalito, CA. See if you qualify here.

Image: Flickr user Ewa Rozkosz 

We still don't have flying cars (not quite, anyway, despite some works in progress). But the 1950s vision of the futuristic home is fairly close to reality.

Inspired in part by mid-century designs like the flying saucer-shaped Futuro house and a "home of the future" designed for the 1956 Ideal Home Show, a new house in the Netherlands is remote-controllable, energy-efficient, and can adapt as a family changes through an open, petal-shaped design.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

With cash now running rampant in the startup and venture world, cash efficiency is often overlooked for pure focus on revenue growth. Yes, revenue growth is critical in startup growth and proving product/market fit – Brad Feld had a great post recently tying revenue growth and levels to product/market fit milestones for startups – but what about the cost side?

Employees have proven to be a valuable source for innovative ideas. Which is why more companies are testing crowdsourcing initiatives and other ways to encourage people to innovate. Offering financial incentives has, for a long time, been one way to do this. But the research on whether rewards actually yield more innovation is mixed. On one hand, rewards can motivate employees to speak up; on the other, they bring in a flood of ideas that aren’t really actionable. In the pages of HBR, we’ve said to focus on culture instead of cash and to avoid offering big rewards for innovation, because luring employees with flashy prizes can kill intrinsic motivation.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

It’s almost conventional wisdom that innovation springs from developers and entrepreneurs based in start-up hubs such as Silicon Valley. But in the following video interviews, Intuit cofounder and chairman Scott Cook, Idealab founder and CEO Bill Gross, and Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass contend that large, established companies can also make innovation a priority. They discuss why a company should be prepared to spend money on big ideas, how it can remove roadblocks to experimentation, and the merits of creating its very own idea incubators. These interviews were conducted by McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui, and edited transcripts of their remarks follow.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Even though a range of industry sectors are interested in all methods that can help improve the materials and processes they use in their production lines, they have little knowledge on photon, neutron, and muon techniques. As part of its Industry events, NMI3 has joined forces with the synchrotron consortium CALIPSO and created a common Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) in 2013 to advice on how to enhance industrial use of research infrastructures (RIs).

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

At the beginning of the year Bloomberg released their 2015 Global Innovation Index which compared 50 of the world’s most innovative countries and listed South Korea as number one.

The report focused on six tangible activities that contribute to innovation, including the number of high-tech companies, R&D expenditure per capita, gross value added by manufacturing, the number of patents and research personnel per capita and post-secondary education levels.

Over the past few years, performance-based funding has picked up momentum across the nation. Yet there's little consensus on the best way to carry out the controversial strategy, which rewards or punishes colleges for their graduation or retention rates.

A report released on Thursday by HCM Strategists, and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to provide some answers. Taking the form of a state-by-state breakdown, it assesses and categorizes the policies in 35 states—each of which have either put in place or begun developing outcomes-based funding models to supplement or replace traditional, enrollment-based ones.

I recently wrote a post talking about how some VCs meddle in operating company decisions or some executive teams are too reliant on VCs to jump in and make hard calls for them. Fred Wilson also wrote on a similar topic in his usual more succinct manner, with a great quote being:

Optimists aren’t just people who see the glass half full. They also make more money than pessimists and enjoy health benefits such as fewer colds, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, and a longer life.

That’s something to smile about.

"Children are born optimists and over the course of time, life happens," says Jason Wachob, cofounder and CEO of the healthy living website MindBodyGreen.com. "Circumstances change and cynicism sets in, but deep down most of us want to get back to the optimism of our childhood."

The Chinese lunar New Year is just around the corner. Around this time, expectations among Chinese office workers are high in anticipation of the traditional year-end bonus. For most workers, it’s a pleasant extra, not a windfall.

But what if the incentive for this year takes the form of a car — specifically, a Tesla?

Image: These employees are pretty psyched about the Teslas their company just gave them. Image Credit: WiFi Master Key

New Mexicans are thinking hard about ways to improve our state’s future. In the 21st century, a bachelor’s degree, and increasingly a master’s, is needed to have the skills to compete in the knowledge economy. Here at UNM, and throughout New Mexico, plenty of people are stepping forward with exciting ideas to stimulate our economy. New Mexico is well-positioned to be a leader in creating high-tech companies and jobs, so it is also positioned to keep our college graduates here and support their success. Right now, UNM’s shared Innovate ABQ project and its academic component, the Innovation Academy, are poised to accelerate the process of developing new technologies, new tech companies and educating more entrepreneurial students.